Freeze Seeds to Save Plant Diversity

Cost-effectiveness is a hot topic in conservation, as one might expect. Reputations can be made championing one kind of conservation against another, yet much of the in-fighting is manufactured. There is a complexity in conservation; we may often be best served by compromise. There is no second chance if you ditch the captive breeding program and then the habitat protection effort fails.

The best way to conserve such diversity is by storing seeds in gene banks, to which there is guaranteed free and open access for all.

Yet what if the plant you wish to conserve can no longer be found in the wild? What if the habitat that was its home is no longer there? When no other conservation strategy can work, then there are grounds for a major investment in one particular effort. And there is one conservation challenge where we can make such reassuringly rational decisions.

Conserving the plants that feed us – our crops – is a distinct challenge because it is not the species, but the genetic diversity within species that is the focus. And the “use value,” another hotly contested topic, is undisputed: it is a simple fact that without access to crop diversity, we will not be able to grow the food we require in the future. Diversity is a prerequisite for crop improvement and adaptation.

The habitat where this diversity developed is not wild; by definition, crops are not “natural” at all, but the product of millennia of interaction between people and the plants they depend on. Farmers, whose ancestors created the vast diversity that exists within each crop, still have a vital role to play in conservation, but a huge number of crop varieties are simply not found, nor wanted, outside gene banks. Their irreplaceable value lies in the potential future importance of their genetic make-up.

The best way to conserve such diversity is therefore by storing seeds in gene banks, to which there is guaranteed free and open access for all. Financing that approach is good conservation and good economics. Most comforting, it is guaranteed to succeed.